About HTV

Honourable Greetings!

This is Huliganov TV, or HTV for short, and this as well as some of the traditional style blogging, with texts and images, this will be a properly categorised repository of all the material on my YouTube channel, aka the “Usenetposts” channel, plus the articles I wrote on my previous website usenetposts.com. This will be a little over 50% video based, hence the .tv bracket.

I use internet hosted video for all sorts of purposes, but in the main I put up what I want to do – I used to work, (as the finance director, but the whole team was supposed to be involved in the creative process, so I learned quite a bit about it) of a TV Channel in Russia. My boss had to shape some of my initial suggestions, reminding me that “you don’t make TV for yourself – that’s a golden rule of TV, you make it for the big audience”. This was of course true and the TV business can’t work any other way. But in a way it saddened me.

But 2005 changed all that. Now we have YouTube. Now everyone can make TV for himself or herself. YT’s motto was “Broadcast yourself” and YT could really be summed up as TV you make for yourself, and this is certainly TV I’ve made for myself. I know full well that there are robots and other methods of driving hits. You can even include some gratuitous semi-nude pics in them and it will drive hits, but that’s not what this is all about.

Before I started filming, I had done some photography – maybe eighteen months’ worth. Prior to that I had been going around the world doing my job and going to so many different places, but it was hard to remember after a while what happened in one place and what happened in another. There was just too much of it. I was wasting my opportunities to set up a store of memories for my own old age, for my kids and grandchildren in the future, to share with friends or even – although I didn’t anticipate it so much at the start – a wider public. That’s why I went on YouTube and started to film all over the place. I simply wanted to capture my life – a life at times so busy I don’t always get to even fully appreciate things as they happen, and sometimes the films really help get the most out of any travel experience.

Since starting to film, and – to my amazement – gaining a growing audience, there’s been a reason to go walking around cities in the evenings and not just stay in the hotels reading. Even at times when I haven’t felt like it and would not have gone for myself to this or that event or place, I’ve been for the sake of the channel. YT has enabled me to get a lot more out of my life and my leisure time.

I am currently slightly about 2,100 films on YouTube, and so obviously people find it hard to get straight to what they want from my channel. The categories here are the way to get to the parts of the YouTube collection that you actually want. So it interlinks with the YouTube and enhances it. On the one hand, you can click through to the YouTube films, and see the other comments already existing, and hopefully give me a nice rating over there, but also if you want to start a discussion without the limitations of text and the lack of proper threading that YT suffers from, then you can discuss whatever you like about the film over here. I have set the defaults here to allow discussion threading to next up to 7 levels, which should be enough for most discussions before they start to get silly, and it will allow much more freedom than in YT. Discussion is one of the things this is all about, and even after the Google Plusization of YouTube in the last quarter of 2013, the threading is not ideal although admittedly it is far better than be for and the wise removal of the string length has indeed improved YT interactions.

Of course, this is WordPress, which is a bit more highbrow than the general run of the internet, so I’d appreciate it if people writing comments here would at least try to write in proper sentences and not just txtspk and LOL!!1!, etc. There’s still YT for comments barely over 2 characters long!

In addition to the “TV”, there’ll also be the traditional things like blogs with images, (I do a lot of what I call “gallery” video anyway, so you’ll see what a poor photographer I am if you spend any time here), bogs based just on words, reposts of articles I already put on-line in other places, pdfs, later probably mp3s, and other things also. In short, I hope that this will be a place where I can unite the whole of my creativity, whether done as Huliganov (my most famous “creation”) or not.

The best way to contact me is to leave a message here as a response to one of the posts. Another way is to click through to the YouTube channel, where private contact is also possible, but please note that I don’t welcome it in the case of queries which could benefit others if asked and answered publicly. If you have a question about anything, it’s probable that others have the same question. By the way, I hope to see conversations between my visitors. It is set up so that once you have had a contribution accepted you are then not moderated after that, but of course if this is abused I can block. Those who know me know that I’m very reluctant to block or censor anybody, but there are of course limits of decency and legality.

Like this:

I have come across your gold list and find it very interesting – I have started using it for the last four days for my Italian language journey.

I was wondering would it be at all possible to see an example image/s of your personal goldlist for a Latin language ideally Italian if you have one (so I can have a better idea how to implement it).
In particular, do you write the infinitive of the verb or write each coniugated form separately – as in Italian there are lots of conjugations (so lots of forms of the same word, but that may use up a lot of paper/time).
Also, I heard in a podcast for your french list it was in sentances – is this so you see the word ‘in context’
– what sort of grammer points should I note down in the list.
– sorry one more question: do you use two a4 pages for one headlist and the 3 extra distillations or cram it onto 1 a4 to save space.

I am thourghily enjoying doing your method.
Any answers to the above question will be greatly appreciated.

I don’t have an Italian one, I have used GLM on Spanish, French and Romanian, the first levels of Romanian are old and in the old loose leaf method and the Spanish one is not to hand, and in French I did only advanced work and the verb conjugations I more or less already knew, but to give you an idea how I do it for Romance language verbs, I will give you a model example.

In the Headlist, I am perfectly happy to list the Infinitive on one line with the meaning, the next lines might have all six person forms of the present tense IF it is an irregular verb,, or the modal verb for a class of regular verbs.

If it is a regular verb and I already have the main conjugation, it could be, even in the neadlist, fine to omit the second person and just keep the first and third persons. Usually you can predict the second persons from first person forms. Of course there are some verbs, often to be and to go, where this is not the case. Then you definitely have to do all six and in the Headlist I would have six or four lines for that respectively. After all, they are all separate words.

The present participle and the past participle may deserve two more lines if they are not entirely predictable. Whether it is a verb which takes its past in etre or avoir is relevant to French, but not to most Romance languages. The difference between reflexive and nonreflective forms may be worth noting and also worth noting is the preposition that could come between this verb and ‘to do”, or if there is none at all also mention that. Taking French as an example again commencer A faire qqch but empecher qqn DE faire qqch.

In the cases where the other tenses such as the future, the conditional, the past historic or the imperfect past are self evident and what you would expect you might not need to include or at least not in all persons. In cases where there are things which are irregular or unexpected, write them out and again with a generous allocation of space.

When it comes to distillation, you may find that you put the preposition alongside the infinitive and meaning in the first distillation. By the second you are probably even adding what you can’t remember out of the participles on the same line. Probably the first distillation has the singular forms on one line and the plural on the next, while the second distillation has maybe all forms just on one line.

By the time you are moving over to silver you’ll find that almost all parts of most verbs are already known. The patterns have already sunk in well. Practically it will only be irregular verbs you are still dealing with then, and it will be the usual game of dropping them when you can remember them fine.

Sentences are a great way to use the GoldList, as long as they are correct sentences. Either they should come from the material or if home-made then make sure you have really covered grammar and usage well. It is a good thing for more advanced learners. The Routledge Frequency dictionary contains Italian in the series and has sentences showing use, and here it is worth more to GL the sentences than the words in isolation. If you can’t get such materials don’t sweat it, though.

As far as the look and layout of the paper is concerned, please look at the Indonesian examples in parts 4 and 5 of the new Explanation and if they are not clear, let me know.

I wish you joy of the Method and of the Italian language, a gateway to high culture, exquisite beauty and amazing food.

This thought caught my attention recently. It is an extract from an email sent to me by a well-known animal sanctuary in Norfolk U.K. These words made me re-appraise the way I interact with other sentient beings (human and non-human animals) and thought that others who visit the HTV channel might benefit from this wisdom.

” Reason for Sanctuary…

Jess, who has recently arrived at the Sanctuary in poor condition, is the type of animal who meets no current social criteria that would justify her continued existence. She has a deformed lip and is partly blind in one eye, which quashes any romantic thoughts of the ‘perfect equine’.
Jess just doesn’t make the grade in any way that would render her ‘usable’. In her world she represents the epitome of the unproductive and therefore disposable form of life. But to those of us at Hillside, Jess is just one reason society needs places like ours – places of refuge for ‘non-performers’ in today’s performance-based culture.
Jess, and all of the others to whom we give sanctuary from abuse, neglect and slaughter, is a mere whisper in a world roaring with the importance of things like achievement, competence and productivity.
Jess represents the almost forgotten value of other qualities such as kindness, compassion, inherent value and community spirit. For if performance is indeed of greater importance than kindness, then there is no place in this world for animals like Jess. The longing that so many of us feel as human beings for a more compassionate world for our children and ourselves, would sadly remain unfulfilled.
Jess takes up so little space, yet because she cannot ‘perform’ she would be denied even that much. But in society’s denial of space, a final ‘use’ would be found for her – she would be sent to the slaughterhouse to endure all its terror, so that she can become food for the tables of Europe and create profit for corporate giants.
Jess, and many others like her, is our only defence for our decision to provide sanctuary for all animals in need, not just choosing those, for example, that could be re-homed with new families. Efforts to rehabilitate rideable or usable horses for instance, though often well-intentioned, are too easily overshadowed by the justification of performance-based values.
Sanctuary, on the other hand, is one of those words that pricks at the collective conscience of society. It pricks at it because Jess needs sanctuary, not from a great evil ‘out there somewhere’, but because she needs it from us, the you and me that make up society. Because such great value is put on performance, horses are in jeopardy from the moment they are born. But that should not be any great surprise, for most of us learn from an early age that our value as individuals is directly linked to whether or not we can perform, produce or be competent at something.
That is where Jess becomes important. Though imperfect, she is a gentle being, vulnerable because of her inability to ‘perform’ or even make us ponder her fate. The decisions we make about Jess and many others like her, become the measure of who we really are as people and as a society. Our collective character is not formed by our decisions about the most beautiful, powerful or competent – it is shaped by the way we treat the weakest and neediest amongst us.
So when adults and children come to visit the animals at Hillside, we speak to them about the importance of a world where there is room for the imperfect. And as they watch animals like Jess snoozing in the sunshine, or ambling happily around with their companions, they are able to learn the real meaning of sanctuary, painted in the bold colours of their living, breathing existence. And because we can provide a place of hope, healing and comfort for Jess, and those like her, then maybe, just maybe there is some hope for healing and comfort for the rest of us.”

I hope that anybody reading this might be persuaded to do their bit to bring just a little more healing and comfort to a tired and cold world.
*****************************************************************************************

It’s something of prime interest to me how we can combine care with dignity for retired horses and donkeys with vocations and therapy for autistic youth. I mean to start such a project in full in due course.

Excellent idea. It would be (to use that much over-used figure of speech but it does seem apt here) a win-win situation. I hope that the proposed project is a success and wish you the best of luck with it.
I’ve often thought about the reasons that certain elements within a society seem to be totally devoid of any empathy with the plight of others who, through no fault of their own, live utterly miserable and painful lives. On the other hand many people are overflowing with concern for others and make it their business to help in any way they can. History shows us that this has always been the case and is by no means peculiar to the 21st century. Seems that the “progress” made by the human species over,say, the last 500 years has been heavily biased towards scientific and technological advances. The ethical, and compassionate advances fall very short of this.
Even on a trivial workaday level, I wonder how many people stop to think of the awful conditions under which many call-centre staff work, before they launch abuse at them for a failing of the company they happen to work for.

Absolutely off topic here but I can thoroughly recommend the following book for it’s flowing prose, fascinating insights and its view of how french life was in 1912.
It is “The Life of the Fly” by Jean Henri Fabre {1823-1915} [taken from “Souvenirs entomologiques”] – see also https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Henri_Fabre. I have only a passing interest in entomology, but Fabre’s books are far more than entomological studies. He encompasses so many varied topics that seemed to be the hallmark of science writers of that period. They were, in the main, polymaths who had passions for many and varied subjects and were able to write in beautiful and often quirky style. It is, à mon avi, a pleasure to read. This is particularly the case with my old (english translation) copy which is in a good largish font size which makes it easier on my ageing eyes. There’s no accounting for literary taste I suppose !
…..rambling Sid.

Thanks for that Jean-Henri Fabre recommendation, Alan. Audible seems to have him only in Chinese and German, but Kindle has both English and French texts, some of which are free of charge, which is always great value for money…

Are we right in believing you were a ‘stazhor’ at Voronezh University? The University is celebrating its centenary in September 2017 and is inviting all UK alumni to come and take part. For more details please email VoronezhUniCentenary@outlook.com.

This is Kimberly from HelloTalk, a Language Exchange Learning App. I’m writing this letter wondering if you could take a time to look at HelloTalk and review it.

HelloTalk is an app which is similar to WhatsApp but has more features on language learning. Such as in-app translation, text-to-voice, voice-to-text, transliteration, and grammar correction. So far, there are more than 100 languages in the app and over 1,200,000 users worldwide. By using HelloTalk, one could learn and practice a language with native speakers.

To know more about HelloTalk, please visit:
-http://www.hellotalk.com/
-http://www.fluentin3months.com/hellotalk-review/.

This may sound like a silly question but I feel like i’ve ready everything but know nothing! Do you have a video of step by step procedures (or s.th similar) of how Gold List works? I only found out about it yesterday and am excited. I have been trying to learn Arabic for such a long time (a year). I work really hard (like, 2 hours every day) but can’t seem to recall anything. At times, I really lose motivation but constantly push myself to keep persevering. If you do have something, that would be fantastic. If not, where can I read about it. I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere on this site but have got confused and lost it again. It sounds like what I’ve been looking for!

Have you seen all the various articles about the Goldlist which you’ll find under the category “Goldlist methodology” here? They should help.
I think you need to read them and also the stuff I wrote in the Polyglot project book (free on docstocs, see http://youtube.com/syzygycc ). It sounds as if you are in the classic situation of trying too hard. What languages have you learned until now and what methods have you tried? What do you do for these two hours a day? In fact over 600 hours should give you a good command of Arabic, if done properly.

This is the thing. I’ve been doing it for so long but can barely put a handful of sentences together. The class I was taking would get us to look at stories and translate them in class and then get us to memorise about 30 words for the next lesson that would be relevant for the story in the next class. So most of the time i was spending was trying to memorise lists of words. We would also have a vocab test at the beginning of the class. I’ve never actually seen it like 600 hours, which makes me feel even worse! I am a native speaker of English and Bengali (A south-east Asian language), but this is my first attempt to learn a language. Thanks for the advice, which I will check out, but I’ve always done better when someone has shown me the steps as we’ve gone along (I get really confused following instructions and trying to visualise them). I will give it a shot though, but for future, it would be great if a step by step video showing the actual book etc would be great. By the way, I did find a two part one where you speak with a heavy Russian accent, but the part two is not there. Any ideas?!!

All the parts are in reverse order in the section here (not the page but the category, which you’ll find under languages and linguistics in the right hand navigation bar).

You had the problem that you were forced to memorise consiously words, ergo you switched on your short-term memory and it was foreseeable that after two weeks none of this would be recalled. Teachers do this to assure themselves a lifelong income, from the students blaming themselves for their failure. I wrote about 100 pages about this in the Polyglot Project which is free and I can’t write nearly as much here as I wrote there, but as you know you have the ability to learn languages when you don’t even try to. Nobody asked you to learn words for next Friday in Bengali (by the way my cat is a Bengali too) or in English, but you did it well enough. You only failed in these taught languages because of the ignorance of the teacher.

The thing to do is to get the book which should have 40 lines deep, and start writing the vocab in blocks of 25, dating and numbering them from 1 to whatever multiple of 25 you are on. The headlist is always on the top left of a notebook which is open, and has two pages to write on, a left one and a right one.

When you write them out you do it without making any attempt to memorise them. You can think about them in an interested way and if associations present themselves, you can think about them, but don’t try to create them and don’t try to remember anything there and then, just enjoy the words.

Then carry on and do more and more, but always leave a gap of at least 10 minutes between each 25. You turn the page and do another 25 on the top left of the next page, and you number it 26 to 50, and put the date on if it’s different. You leave the three quarters of the double writing area blank for the future.

After doing this for at least two weeks, possibly more – up to two months I go – you then return to the beginning again and you look honestly at the words you wrote at the start. You then select those of them that you know and you put an x by them. You also try t combine them so that two words make a small phrase or can be learned as part of a small list together.

The you rewrite the words you don’t go in this more condensed manner, trying to achieve it so that one third less is written (about 17 to 18 lines, but you don’t have to be religious about it as long as some progress is being made) again, in writing them out you don’t try to learn it, but the fact is that the unconscious memory will have sampled some without you needing to take over the process consciously, and that’s basically what happened when you learned English and Bengali.

And the rest is a continuation of the same. the second list is called the first distillation and is at the top right area. You date and number it so that it has its own numbering system, If there are 17 in the first page, then the second page, where you had Headlist 26-50 you end up with say D1 18-34.

And you carry on doing that until you catch up with the headlist, but if you find yourself already reviewing and distilling things which are less than two weeks, then you should start expanding the headlist instead.

Once the first distillation has passed two weeks, it’s time to do the second distillation at the bottom right, and again all the same principles apply. After another two weeks you’ll be distilling that one off to the bottom left. After another two weeks you can start a second book for the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh distillations. I call this the silver book and the book with H and D1, D2 and D3 the bronze book. You may need several bronze books per languages but only one silver book. If you need to go further you get a gold book, and one of these would do for all your languages, as you know only have a small percentage of the original headlist, and you’d never fill the book.

Is there any part of that you are not clear about? If so, let me know and I will try to explain it another way. I’m happy you asked because probably there are other people who have the same questions but may be too shy to ask.

That explanation has really helped me out and I think I now know what I need to do. Based on your explanation I attempted to create a basic plan for learning over the next few months, which I really would like for you to see. The one query I had at this stage was ‘overlap’. For example, in my plan I’ve planned to do 4 headlists a day, 7 days a week, 28 headlists a week. Over the course of 4 weeks, this gives 112 headlists and consequently 2800 words. Do I do ALL the headlists first (112) and then move on to D1 – do ALL D1, then D2 and ALL D2, etc etc all the way to D7. That is, do I leave 4 week gaps for all movements across distillations? Or do I move to D1 after two weeks, in which case D1 distillation of headlist 1 will coincide with the beginning of headlist 57 (28 headlists per month, beginning of 3rd week), and this overlap will keep on continuing with D1 distillation of week 3 coinciding with beginning of D2 distillation? I know that sounds complex and I’d really like to send you my excel plan sheet if that’s confused you. I just want to know if its ok to be doing distillations and headlists on one day etc?

Sorry to hound you like this but this is just an addition to my previous response and it would be great if you could help out with this also. Essentially, following on from my previous response, the reason I’m asking about ‘overlapping’ etc is because I really want to learn as many possible words from now until October 2011. This is because I am planning to go to Syria for a year and so really want to arm myself with as many passive words as possible in order to activate them immediately (don’t want to be like the Callan person you mentioned who immersed themselves on and off for three years and said something along the lines of ‘would meester like cup off tea’ – hillarious, in stitches when I read that). Is it possible to distil 14,000 words through 7 distillations from now until then? Is this unrealistic? How can I do it without potentially having to do new headlists plus counteless distillations in one day? I know it’s a lot to ask for you to write a ’10 month plan’ for me, but any pointers of how this is feasable (or not) would be appreciated. And if not, what amount of words is feasable in this time?

This may sound like a silly question but I feel like i’ve ready everything but know nothing! Do you have a video of step by step procedures (or s.th similar) of how Gold List works? I only found out about it yesterday and am excited. If you do, that would be fantastic. If not, where can I read about it. I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere on this site but have got confused and lost it again.

Hello Victor,
I was looking at your book store on Amazon.com, especially the Russian language learning textbooks. It would be nice if you gave an option for buying the Kindle digital versions for download, as well as the hard-copy, because I think it would make your book store usable internationally and you might get more customers.

I’m presently taking an interest in Kindle (for PC) Russian textbooks because I rather fancy using the “Notes and Marks” facility to scribble my own notes all over the book to aid my learning. Unfortunately at present many of the Kindle conversions are unsatisfactory because the Cyrillic text has been transferred as graphics, not put into a Cyrillic font, but some Russian textbooks can be found which have been converted to Kindle properly.

Apart from that, I just wanted to say “Hello”. You often entertain me with your videos and writings, though some are too learned for my understanding.

Thanks for that, Peter. You are right that it’s probably about time I improved the stores a bit and included Kindle amongst them, especially as Amazon is finally releasing Kindle all over the world. Personally I am thinking of having a DX one with global free GPS for Christmas. I’m not sure how much that “notes and marks” facility uses up the memory, though.

Delighted you enjoy the videos and hope you get something out of the ideas I’m developing on here as well. See you round.

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56 year old UK origin Chartered Accountant and business consultant who loves languages, literature, history, religion, politics, internet, vlogging and blogging and lively written or spoken discussion, plays backgammon and a few other board games. Walks and listens to Audible for hours a day usually, and avoids use of the car. Conservative Christian, married to an angel with advanced Multiple Sclerosis. We have three kids, two of them autistic, and we live in Warsaw, Poland. On the board of the main British-Polish charity Fundacja Sue Ryder in Poland, and involved in the Vocational Autistic School of "Nie Z Tej Bajki" in Warsaw. Member of Gideons International. Serves on two committees of the Chamber of Auditors in Poland, and on several Boards and Supervisory Boards. Has own consultancy called Quoracy.com delivering business governance and audit/valuation solutions as well as mentoring. Author of the GoldList Method for systematic optimal use of the long-term memory in learning.